Recently, a situation arose in Europe involving the Pirate Bay, a website known for redistributing materials without regarding copyrights or authorship. A Swedish court had ruled that the website was guilty of making copyrighted work freely available without consulting the original authors. The result was a fine of 3.3 million euros. The founders of the website tried to have the European Court of Human Rights re-examine the case, claiming that the ruling was in violation of free-speech. However, this request was denied, with the reason being that the ruling in Sweden had already settled the matter. This relates to what has been discussed in class recently, specifically in Copyright’s Highway. Truly, the founders of the website were at fault here. Freedom of expression does not allow for the stealing of ideas.

http://rt.com/news/pirate-bay-case-rejected-strasbourg-240/